


Witness Protection

by TaraTyler



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, adorable whipped asshole
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 19:51:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5218673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaraTyler/pseuds/TaraTyler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: Witness Protection Program Au<br/>	Carmilla is a workaholic detective who just so happens to rescue journalist!Laura from a would be rape/murder situation and ends up bringing her home to take care of until a place in overcrowded NY WP opens. Romance, fake dating, and awkwardness ensues...on to the story</p>
            </blockquote>





	Witness Protection

“So, until the higher ups find you a more permanent or even a temporary home, you’ll be staying with me.” Detective Karnstein explained as she unlocked the door to her apartment.

“We’ll be hiding you in plain sight for the next couple of weeks.” Carmilla continues, trying to not go nuts thinking about the fact that the little woman would be living with her for a while. It was a simple three room apartment, done up in light browns, beiges, and whites. Laura guessed that nearly every apartment in the building had started out with the same decorations and color schemes. Carmilla didn’t seem like the decorating type. The most ‘Detective Karnstein’ thing about the place were the case files, stacks of paperwork and wrappers from food lying nearly everywhere. Laura kind of wanted to grin at the way the very first room she was able to see accurately depicted the exact impression that she had gotten from this woman. Still, her face stilled as she remembered why she was there. Her elbow still hurt from where it had smacked into her attacker’s face.

“What are we going to tell people about why I’m staying with you? Won’t the neighbors ask questions?” Laura asks, her brown eyes wide still, from an awful combination of fear and shock. She was amazed by the idea of everything that had happened. Carmilla had saved her life mere hours before and now she was walking around as though absolutely nothing had happened, as though absolutely nothing were different and that Laura’s life had not just absolutely changed forever.

Laura had been simply walking down the street with her friends after going out with her girlfriend at the time. They had been going to go out to eat when Laura had fallen back a bit. In her haste to fix a shoelace, someone had gone and circled back from where he had been following the group. He had gone back for Laura. She had probably seemed awfully vulnerable, back there on her own, and tying her shoes.

Carmilla had been driving around, doing patrols on her own, while Laura began to feel those eyes on her. However, when Laura glanced around she didn’t see anything and stood up, only for an arm to encircle her head to muffle her scream and around her waist to drag her away. Carmilla saw Laura and the man and automatically knew that trouble was most definitely afoot. She made a very illegal u-turn and screeched her tires to get back to the girl in danger. Laura heard the sound but automatically assumed that it was more bad guys, she shifted all of her weight to one side and slammed her elbow back and into the man who had come after hers abdomen.  
Laura couldn’t help but to want to scream and protest and yell out of fear. She knew that she had to be strong and brave the way her father had taught her, but in the back of her mind were echoes of the worst kind of combination of rage and panic that she had no clue of what to do with. She used it to fuel herself as she fought on. Carmilla felt as though she were in a race against time, like she had to defuse a bomb or solve a puzzle in the fastest possible way that she could. Carmilla knew that she could do never allow anything to happen to allow to another person like that so she spurred herself on.

Laura fought tooth and nail, knowing that she would do whatever it took. She thought everything was hopeless until she saw a dark figure yelling for passersby to help. She heard several shots and cries of “Stop! Police!” Carmilla knew that she couldn’t do much of anything to help but to scare the attacker away, so she fired shots into the air. This gave Laura the opportunity she needed to bring down her elbow across the man’s temple, knocking him to the ground, just as Carmilla brought him down with a tackle. Laura couldn’t help but to be incredibly impressed.

As a journalist, Laura was already gearing up to write the story of everything that had just happened, even if it were something that had just happened to her and she was still rather terrified.

“I don’t know them well enough for them to be too curious, so I guess that we could say that you’re my cousin or sister that’s staying with me for a while.” the young detective answered.

“Really?” Laura asks gesturing to their reflections in the mirror to point out that they looked absolutely, not at all alike.

“Okay, you can be my girlfriend.” Carmilla says as she unbuttons her shirt, sheds her jacket and drops her keys and badge onto the coffee table. She does everything that she can to avoid blushing and fails.

“You see, now that is believable.” Laura says with a grin, plopping down onto the couch. Carmilla goes into the kitchen and makes sandwiches for them both.

“What do you usually do with your day after you’re done with your work, and chasing down all of the bad guys?” Laura asks. “You know, when you don’t have the vic in attempted murder cases camped out in your living room.”

“I’ll pull out my files and work on cases or watch T.V. My job is kind of also my life.” Carmilla says at she sits beside of Laura and does just that. “You can pick what to watch, I just need the background noise.”

“You don’t date or go out?” Laura asks, looking surprised.

“I mostly work.” Carmilla repeats.

“You are way too hot for that. No. No. Tomorrow, we go dancing. It’s a Friday night and we need to establish our cover as a couple anyways. It’s a date night.” Laura announces happily.

“You’re supposed to stay in here with me where you are safe.” Carmilla protests.

“I’m safer when people aren’t asking questions about who I am and where I came from.” Laura argues, and Carmilla can already tell that this girl is going to be a major handful. For some reason, though Carmilla couldn’t help but look forward to the adventure that she knew that Laura would bring. She thought back to when she had first met the young woman.

Laura had kind of beaten the shit out of her attacker long before Carmilla had managed to get to her and she was impressed beyond measure. She was super hot and super scared and shirtless, so Carmilla made the obvious decision of shrugging off her overshirt and draping it over Laura’s shoulders, showing off her muscular body while simultaneously covering Laura’s. 

“You okay, honey?” Carmilla asks. Her eyes dark with rage over the things that this girl has clearly been put through already.

“I believe that I will be. Eventually. I want this douche in chains though. Don’t go easy on him.” Laura asks, her own eyes dark with what could easily be mistaken for hate if one didn’t know better. She turns around and begins to walk away.

“You’re going to have to come with me though, sweetheart. You’ll be safe I swear.” Carmilla promises, knowing that Laura probably didn’t want to be anywhere near the man who had been going to most likely rape and abuse her. Then, probably kill her as well.

“Can you probably, maybe, let me ride in another car. Or, put him elsewhere a little bit.” Laura suggests.

"Right, um, yeah." Carmilla asks, amused but understanding that Laura was rambling out of nervousness, shock, and residual fear.

“Gimme a break. I was nearly raped. I’m pretty sure that you saw all of that, right?” Laura grumbled back in return.

“Yeah, sorry. Let me collar the…” Carmilla turns to the man she intended to smash into gelato and put into jail for eternity, or for as long as his lifespan would allow. Or at least she turned to where she thought that she left him, only to find him gone. “Bloody hell!” she yells.

“I’m going to go absolutely apeshit if he tries this on anyone else because we let him get away.” Laura growls and it actually freaks Carmilla out a little bit.

“I guess you won’t have any qualms about being brought to the station for processing and protection then, will you?” the detective asks anyway. “I’m Detective Carmilla Karnstein and you are?” she asks.

“Laura Hollis, journalist.” she introduces herself, sticking out her hand. Carmilla takes it in her warm one and shakes, glad to have finally made things better.  
“Let’s put this bastard away for life.”

“Fine, but just this once. It could help with our cover just so long as you aren’t seen. I’ll run it by the boss.” the detective says as she tosses her folder of work stuff onto the table and retreats to her room for a moment to change clothes.

Laura’s day is starting to catch up with her by the time Carmilla returns. Her face has gone a bit more pale and her eyelids are closing more and more on gold/brown eyes. Carmilla’s face draws into a scowl as she thinks about what had happened. Some creep sneaking up behind an innocent and young looking girl, thinking that he can force her into a good time. His shock when he realizes that she isn’t just going to take it and fights back. Laura’s fear when he pulls a knife and comes back.  
Carmilla sits and lets the younger woman fall asleep against her one hand on her gun at all times. She refuses sleep herself for as long as she can, not wanting to miss something that could come after them, an unnecessary panic striking through her. In sleep Laura looks peaceful and at ease, as opposed to how strong she had seemed sitting on the couch beside of her.

\-----/////-----

“Detective Karnstein? Detective Karnstein! Carmilla!” Laura pesters the sleeping woman until she wakes up.

“What’s going on?” she asks when she’s a little bit more aware.

“I made breakfast. We must have fallen asleep on the couch. You need to go grocery shopping, you barely have any food here at all. Eggs and bacon were all that I could come up with. I put my clothes in the wash with a load of your dirties and borrowed a big t-shirt. I guess that I’ll have to go shopping before our big date tonight.” Laura rambles nervously.

“You don’t have to be anxious about any of this.” Carmilla tries to sooth the young woman’s nerves.

“Don’t I? You’re doing so much for me and my even being here is putting you in danger.” Laura protests.

“I wouldn’t have ever even brought you here if I didn’t think that I was completely capable of keeping both you and myself completely safe while I kept you here. You and I will both be perfectly fine. I am very good at my job, but that also means that you aren’t going to be going anywhere that I am not, so make a list and I will get us everything that we need, so hop to it, Cupcake.” Carmilla says with an amiable grin that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Of course, right. My bad. I didn’t mean to make it sound like I was doubting your abilities, or saying that I didn’t think that you were any good at your job.” Laura apologizes, rambling nervously.

“Stop that. You are okay here. This is going to be home for the next while and for better or for worse you’re also my girlfriend. That means that you need to be relaxed at home around me. We need to make ourselves out to be a believable couple. Right now, you look so tightly wound that if I were to even touch you, your head would pop off. You look freaked out. What’s bothering you?” Carmilla asks.

“We aren’t a believable couple and that means that a killer-rapist-bad guy-person is going to likely blow my head off. Okay. No pressure there.” Laura mumbles to herself.

“That’s highly unlikely. We are protecting you by having you stay here, because I I.D.’d that guy as a member of a gang who went around doing some bad shit that night, what was about to happen to you was only a part of that. Now, tell me what about being here and being around makes you so uncomfortable.” Carmilla says, losing her temper a little bit because something was bothering Laura and she couldn’t fix it. Carmilla Karnstein didn’t like not being able to fix something immediately.

“I’m worried that I’m imposing on you. I don’t like it that I don’t have a purpose here. I don’t have something that I am supposed to be doing. I don’t like it that you have to take care of me, and I don’t like it that I feel all nervous all of the time because I don’t know when we are going to be attacked or something crazy like that. I just want everything to go back to normal as soon as possible.” Laura rants a little bit, and even that helps to make her feel a little bit better.

“See, now that you’ve told me all of that I can do something about it.” Carmilla tries to be comforting but she still can’t seem to stop sounding abrasive. However, Laura seems to get the point.

“Okay, that makes sense. What are we going to do about it?” Laura asks, ready immediately to do whatever it she has to do. She can’t believe that she has to live here with an incredibly sexy detective who saved her life. Not that it was a bad thing. Not that it was a good thing either. It was a very confusing thing. Especially when it seemed like Carmilla never seemed to be wearing all of her clothes. Or the right clothes to disguise a fantastic body. It dawned on Laura then, why she felt so apprehensive all of the time around Carmilla. It was a stupid and hopeless middle school crush. She had always had the worst timing.

“The only thing that we can do. Give it time. You’ll adjust to it all. They say that you could get completely used to having the actual world upside down in just three days. Give it a little bit. I’m kind of prickly but I promise that I’m really not all of that bad.” Carmilla runs a hand through her hair again, tossing it carelessly over the back of her head. Effortlessly sexy moves like that were probably going to eventually drive Laura mad and send her looking for one of those gang members to take her out so that she wouldn’t have to live with the world’s worst crush ever.

“Well, first we’ll test this out with chemistry. What has more sexy times potential than dress shopping?” Carmilla asks with the world’s flirtiest wink that automatically made Laura want to melt into a puddle on the floor, never to return. Laura was pretty sure that she at least had a modicum of the chemistry even if Carmilla didn’t. Laura took Carmilla’s hand, already confused about whether this was real life or a sick dream, or if they were already faking it. She decided to forego the limits and go on with life as though they were a for real couple. She skipped the hand holding and went straight to holding onto Carmilla’s arm, as though she were a normal and clingy girlfriend. A love-struck puppy as it were.

Carmilla drove her to the mall in a sleek car provided by the station as her undercover. If anything, Laura certainly appreciated the perks of living with a hottie badass detective and riding in an almost equally hot car. The downside was being on a gang’s hit list, but that was something that she could live with. Life would be perfect if the detective weren’t only pretending to be her girlfriend and she could have her job/life back. She adored her work even if she were just the literally bottom of the totem pole. It was one of the things that made her think that the Detective Carmilla Karnstein was way out of her league.

Laura steps into the dressing room and slips into her third dress of the evening. She wanted to put on something to wow her detective date. She didn’t feel at all as though she measured up. That is, until she left the dressing room and she knocked Carmilla’s socks right off of her feet. Carmilla sees nothing but a tight dress clings to Laura’s entire person and she feels as though she can’t breathe. She had always known that Laura was attractive, but she had never allowed herself to feel anything about it, but now her engine was revving with no race to run. 

“Well, damn.” Carmilla says with a low whistle.

“I’ll take it that that was a good thing.” Laura says with a grin. 

“We have definitely found your dress, let’s go pick up some food.”Carmilla says with a kind and encouraging smile. 

Laura and Carmilla both feel intensely domestic as they walk hand in hand through the grocery store making jokes and teasing one another as they did so. Laura feels at this point as though she has known the older woman her whole life and Carmilla is incapable of helping but to agree. Carmilla has to scold herself over and over again for wanting more with someone that she knows that she can’t have, but it doesn’t seem to be working. Every time that she tries to pull away, Laura will do something adorable, or accidentally stunning to real Carmilla right back in. No matter what she does she can’t stop the wanting and the pining buried deep within her chest.

Laura is hanging off of Carmilla’s arm when they reach the register, begging like a two year old for candy. 

“Hey, there Detective. Who’s your friend?” the cashier asks, apparently an acquaintance or a friend of Carmilla’s, immediately restarting the panic and the worry in Laura’s heart. 

“This is Parker, my girlfriend.” answers Carmilla smoothly as though it were no big deal at all. Something that happened all of the time. “She’s just moved in with me.”

“I didn’t know you were seeing anybody. You’re a lucky girl, Ms.Parker. Congratulations, and the best of luck.” the older woman says with a congenial grin.

“Same to you, ma’am. Have a great day.” Carmilla replies with a smile of her own as she gathers the bag and leads them towards home.

“That was one of the scariest things that I have ever gone through. I can’t believe that I just froze up like that, dammit.” Laura scolds herself harshly.

“It’s no big deal, Poptart. It’ll get easier. Lying shouldn’t come second-nature to you. It’s a learned skill. That’s why we’ve been going on these outings all day long. To get you adjusted to both me and the situation. Let’s get going.” Carmilla says, no longer looking at Laura but over her shoulder at some wannabe’s who are giving them the stink eye. “Don’t freak out.” She barely has time to warn her before pushing her up against the wall as quickly as possible and locking their mouths together.

The next thing that Laura knew and they were kissing, her body melting under Carmilla’s mouth like butter on a hot biscuit, unsure of what was going on anymore and enjoying the moment, not willing to protest and not willing to give up the moment even to assuage her burning curiosity as her toes curled in her shoes like they hadn’t in a very long time. The sleeves of Carmilla’s leather jacket were wrapped up tightly in Laura’s small fists, and one of Carmilla’s hands was tangled in the soft locks of Laura’s golden brown hair that matched her eyes so well. Her other kept her balance on the wall as her body pressed Laura’s to pin her there, using her own body as both disguise and shield should her charge have been recognized.

The detective has also been sucked into the moment, completely unwilling to let it go as the younger woman begins to push back, also totally swept away in a heady mix of Carmilla’s own smell and her own visceral need for comfort. It takes a while for Carmilla to realize where they are and how they got there after catcalls and shouts of horror from parents. She then pulls back and Laura tries to follow before realizing as well.

“You okay?” Carmilla asks, embarrassedly wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand as she tries to disguise her blush.

“Yeah, what was that about?” Laura asks, unabashedly a very cute bright red that reached all of the way to her ears. It matched the fire still burning in her eyes well.

“Bad guys, I had to hide you and I didn’t have enough time to think of some better way to cover you up.”

“I’m tiny. It couldn’t be that hard.” Laura chuckles, trying to brush the moment under the rug so that she could keep and treasure it forever. Carmilla just stared at her, unwilling to admit that she was feeling what she was feeling. She didn’t want to feel the things that she was feeling. It was against every rule in the book and she was a rule follower. She was dark and broody and she didn’t talk much but she followed the rules. She kept the code that she was sworn to uphold. She was married to the work. She was married to the job, and she was married to the law code to which she had sworn her vows. That code expressly forbid her having a relationship with Laura. It was there that she found the loophole she needed as well.

“Let’s get going.” she decides her path and turns around to walk away. Her blush only darkens every time that she looks at Laura so she doesn’t and she doesn’t know what to say to the younger woman so she doesn’t say anything at all, allowing herself to once again get all wrapped up in her own thoughts and feelings, nearly letting them consume her. Her knuckles turn white around the wheel and neither of the women speak to one another on the way home.

Laura is truly freaking out as Carmilla sits at the dinner table with her fingers steepled staring across the room at nothing at all. She moves around the kitchen, cooking nervously trying her best to figure out what was wrong. She had figured out on her own that Carmilla had seen something that freaked her out and required her to hide Laura by kissing her, but she had no idea why that led to Carmilla refusing to speak to her and being all broody like. It was scaring the snot out of Laura, the intensity with which Carmilla was staring a hole into the wall on the other side of the room.

“Hey, uhm, Carm? I made dinner if you would like some?” Laura asks, brushing some hair behind her ear as she bites her bottom lip under her teeth and presents a parmesan chicken to the midst of the table, disturbing Carmilla’s mental breakdown.

“Yeah, thanks, Creampuff.” she says noncommittally, trying to not allow the lip bite to turn her on again.

“I’m sorry about whatever I did wrong. I’m not sure what it was but if you explain it to me I promise to never ever ever do it again. Just tell me what I did.” Laura prompts her, still looking freaked out.

“Oh, honey, it wasn’t anything that you did. I did something. I shouldn’t have kissed you like that. It was wrong of me and out of the blue and I should have talked to you and considered your feelings first. And my own. I felt some stuff that I really shouldn’t have. It’s against the rules and I should have very much done better. I know better. Really, I do.” Carmilla groans, knocking her head against her kitchen table.

“You’re pissed at yourself because you’re having feelings for me?” Laura scoffs. She wants to believe what she’s hearing but she’s quite sure that somehow she is managing to bullshit herself into hearing what she wants to hear and not what is actually happening. 

“Yep. It’s ridiculous isn’t it?” Carmilla makes fun of herself.

“It’s not stupid at all. I’ve been wrestling with it since we woke up this morning. I would say that living together and waking up to spooning in your jammies can have that effect on a person but that is just my personal hypothesis. I’ve been trying to figure out how I started to feel this close to you so quickly and the only thing that I can come up with is that it’s the result of sharing a near death experience and staying in such closed quarters for the following length of time, and leaving so little room to adapt. That combined with the utter domesticity of it all gives the impression of a life lived together that hasn’t actually occurred.” Laura rambles, her nervous tick of talking rapidly getting the better of her again.

“Are you sure that you are a journalist and not a behavioral scientist?” Carmilla asks, “Because you just described exactly what I’m feeling.”

“Journalists have to be just a little bit of everything to get by.” Laura shrugs off Carmilla’s comment. “Can we go back to normal now?” she requests.

“Of course. We just have to put what we are feeling aside until we can actually deal with it. Once the bad guys are in jail and I have you all safe and sound and tucked away in your own home. We can address everything then, all out in the open. Until then, let’s maintain a hands off policy.” Carmilla decides.

“Except for tonight of course. Nothing is more hands on than dancing.” Laura decides something for herself. If Carmilla is going to get to maintain her boundaries after discovering her feelings. Laura is going to get to break them all first, just so that she doesn’t ever have to wonder. After dinner, Laura slips into her dress, glad that she and Carmilla are able to talk to one another again and hoping for the same reaction to her appearance as she hadn’t gotten the last time. Especially since she’s getting all dolled up. 

What she hadn’t expected was for an equally dolled up Carmilla to blow her and her dress out of the water in a pair of leather pants, a button down white shirt and suspenders. She dry swallowed as she and Carmilla eye one another. 

“We certainly didn’t intend to make this easy on ourselves, did we?” the detective asks.

“I guess that we didn’t.”

“I’m starting to think that this is a great night to bend the rules a little.” Carmilla says with a smirk, taking Laura’s arm and leading her from the house, looking at her predatorily, her eyes dark but also equally warm. It was comforting to know that even though Laura was going back to somewhere similar to where the mess had begun, she was with someone who cared about her and was definitely going to take care of her.

In the club, the music was loud and the drinks were strong. The two fake girlfriends were easily carried away into the charade of the loving couple out for a bit of fun. They had no choice but to stay pressed against one another on the crowded dance floor. At least that is what they told themselves. They also had no choice but to drink because they would be very much easily seen through if they hadn’t. It got late and they didn’t get home until very early, with bruised lips and hickeys that had been snuck in randomly throughout the night, with an exhausted Carmilla dragging a very much inebriated party girl Laura home, still asking for one more dance and with Carmilla still very much tempted to give it to her. Neither of the women made into their bed and once again, they hit the couch and fell asleep wrapped around one another.

She had woken up that morning with a truly terrible headache and confusion about where she had been or where she was but was actually quite comfortable. Laura’s head was pillowed on something soft and she was wrapped around something warm. It wasn’t for a while until Laura realized that she was not in her own home. It was longer until she realized that the warm thing that she was wrapped around was a person. then she realized that the warm person was Carmilla Karnstein, the detective that was assigned to protect her and that she was in the detective’s apartment to stay for a while until the man who had attempted to kill her had been captured and detained. She could barely believe that all of these things had happened to her, but for the fact that she had just woken up spooning her detective and new fake girlfriend. Laura was surprised by how very well she and the good Detective Karnstein fit together.

She was equally amazed that such an amazing, fantastic, beautiful and strong woman could ever have been interested in her.

Laura had sat up and glanced around after extricating herself and her pinned arm from beneath Carmilla. She was beautiful in her sleep, with none of the hard lines of stress from throughout her face to mar a naturally gorgeous face. Laura found the older woman attractive anyways, but in her state of rest she looked truly radian. At some point after Laura had fallen asleep, Carmilla had shed her white button up and jeans, leaving her in a white camisole shirt with a black sports bra showing through, and her panties. Needless to say that it left Laura a little bit breathless.

She had climbed over Carmilla’s sleeping personage and gone around doing random chores since she didn’t get the feeling that Detective Karnstein was the chores kind of lady. Laura felt like she needed to do something to earn her keep around the place seeing as how Carmilla hadn’t really signed up for their impromptu sleepover.   
That was how a tired and most of the way to naked Carmilla ended up living with Laura, for over a month. Together, they fell into a routine. Karnstein didn’t have a guest bedroom, so most nights they slept together in Carmilla’s bed since Laura said that it helped to maintain their cover as being in a committed relationship anyways. It was still painfully awkward with their acknowledged mutual crush on one another. Any time that they would walk in on one another changing or something similar a lot of staring, blushing, and stuttering would occur to the point that it was almost physically hurtful and nearly everyone around the two of them could tell. Nearly everyone was rooting for them.

The police station even provided Laura with a paying cover job as well at the station filing papers and things. She couldn’t help but to appreciate how hard Carmilla was working to find the guy who had attacked her as well. Sometimes, it was hard to remember that they weren’t actually in a relationship, like how when the neighbors were looking, Carmilla would kiss Laura on the cheek or chastely on the lips. Laura hadn’t known that it could feel that good to just be with someone. It felt natural for them to walk down the hall with Laura’s arm around Carmilla’s waist and Carmilla’s strong arm around little Laura’s shoulders. It was almost as though it were meant to be. Laura could believe it if she worked hard enough to. Laura wanted to work hard enough to.

“Hey, Carm?” Laura asked as she was making them dinner one night and Carmilla was working at the dining room table. It had taken Laura ages to get that thing cleared off. It had centuries worth of garbage, wrappers, and police work on it.

“Yeah, cutie?” Carmilla replies, putting down her pen and running a hand through dark hair.

“Do you think that once this is all over we could still be friends?” Laura bites her lip in a way that Carmilla still hadn’t managed to get used to and looks at her thoughtfully.

“You know, I’ve never actually considered the idea that you were actually going to move out on me one day. I’ve always thought that you would just leave for a week or two, I would collar the evildoer who tried to hurt you and you would eventually get to come home to me. Then I could meet all of your friends that you have told me about so often and your family that I’ve heard a lot less about. We would just be one big ol’ happy family and I could actually date you seriously and for real.” Carmilla muses aloud. “That is, if that were something that you would want to do.”

Laura blinks a few times, completely forgetting about the food that she was about to put on the table and says “Huh.” sets the pan back on the burner, crosses the apartment in a few steps and kisses the detective like she means it, tilting Carmilla back in her chair to the point that she had to hold onto Laura’s hips so that she wouldn’t feel like she’s about to fall over. Carmilla pulls Laura’s hair down, dragging her closer, neither of them caring anymore. She pushes herself up and out of the chair both of them falling backwards towards the wall. Carmilla pins her against it and ties her hands up in long locks, tugging at the hem of Laura’s shirt before the younger woman relieves her of her own. She laughs into the kisses, making Laura smile at the sound that she has come to love dearly. It was rare for Carmilla to laugh and to also mean it, making the sound a truly precious commodity. As into it Carmilla truly was, she knew that right then, she and Laura couldn’t truly be together as of yet.

“Wait a moment, love.” Carmilla hits pause on the moment that they were sharing, making Laura groan with frustration.

“What could you possibly want right now?” Laura asks, in her haste to get back to the kissing and the undressing, like right then.

“We can’t...yet.” Carmilla groans, just as frustrated about it as Laura. “It’s literally illegal.”

“What if I don’t care?” Laura asks. 

“I promise that as soon as I can catch this guy we can be together for real. We will be together for as long as you will have me. I swear it.” Carmilla promises.

“But I want it now.” Laura whines.

“Let’s watch a movie and have a cuddle.” Carmilla encourages.

“Cuddles are good too, but that other thing is a lot better.” she continues to complain.

“Yeah, I know.” Carmilla allows, running a hand through her hair and not bothering to put her shirt back on, flops down onto the couch and allows Laura to climb into her embrace. She turns on a movie and Laura curls into her, wishing for more than she knew that she could have ever wanted.

Chapter Two

When Carmilla woke up, it was to find Laura sitting at her table writing. 

“Are you working on that story of yours again, love?” Carmilla asks sleepily.

“Yeah, it just seems to me as though I can never quite capture you right. I don’t like it.” Laura says, quite uncomfortable with Carmilla looking at her work. “It’s funny, to write one where I’m actually a character as well.”

“You were there, and you saw me there as well. Just write what you know. That’s what is important. Just...maybe make me seem a smidgen bit cooler, yeah?” Carmilla asks.

“You were cool, babe. I thought that you were awesome. In my book at least, and I think that you always will be. Anyone who says or thinks differently can take it up with me from now on.” Laura says, feeling like the baddest of the bitches, despite still being a tiny dork in her pajamas with mussed hair that hadn’t been touched by a brush since the day before.

“When we get you back into the real world, do you plan on running this in the paper?” Carmilla asks. “Because I think that you are brilliant at what you do.”

“If the editor likes it then, yeah, it’ll run. Nothing will ever get into the paper without the say so of the editor. That’s how the world of the newspaper works."

“Do you think he’ll take it?” Carmilla asks, unsure of what to make of Laura’s pessimism.

“It’s highly unlikely.” Laura groans. “Yeah, I know you think that I’m just being a Debbie Downer, but I swear that it’s nothing to do with me. I’m just an itty bitty baby journalist, I’ve got no sway in this realm.”

“The journalism realm? You talk about it like it’s its own magical world.” Carmilla snorts.

“In a way, it kind of is.” Laura says, heart sinking.”None of the rules apply there, and the good guys never win. I write true stories that I hunt down and dig up. The others just make up their own bull-crap and it gets published. My hard-won stories never make it and I don’t know why.” 

Carmilla’s heart sinks for her future girlfriend, at least she will be her future girlfriend eventually if she has anything to say about it.

“I don’t think that that is quite fair if you ask me.”

“I know that it isn’t fair. That is just the way that life is, I guess.” Laura says nonchalantly.

“Well, it isn’t the way that it should be.” Carmilla grumbles.

“I know that. I’ve fought the good fight for a very long time and I’ve worked for a lot. I mean...I do still have the job, don’t I?” Laura says as snarkily as she knew how. “I can’t actually believe in how much I want to go back. I love the work that I do. I love being a journalist. It was my dream job. It is my dream job.”

“I know how you feel. Being a detective was my dream job as well. I love what I do and a large portion of my identity is wrapped up inside of that. For a long time I considered that to be who I am. I considered that to be the love of my life. I am a detective and you are a journalist and that’s who we are.” Carmilla summed it up nicely, and Laura took comfort in it. “If that’s what you want to do, maybe we could find a better way once this is all over. For now, let’s get cleaned up and let’s get out of here. I think that we are due for another cover date, don’t you?”

“I do think that. However you have cover work and I just made it my life’s work to catch the man who tried to hurt you, if only so that I can get laid for the first time in ages. It’s taking literally all of willpower with you here ready and willing. I’ve got a lead that I want to track down.” Carmilla groans some more. “If anything, take comfort in the fantastic story that this is going to make. Especially if you include the romance. Who doesn’t love a good romance?” Carmilla rushes out the door with a kiss to the top of Laura’s head after jumping into her clothes, nearly falling around the apartment in her rush to get out of the door.

She puts everything that she has into work that day, tracking people down, threatening them, and putting the fear of God into them. She bends the law as far as it will allow her, and occasionally just a little bit farther when she felt that it was needed. Apparently she even managed to get onto some of the radar’s of the higher ups in the game that she had intruded in on, and she got into a light fire fight, leading her right to where she wanted to be. She was victorious but bleeding profusely over the broken body of the man who had tried to hurt Carmilla’s person. The detective hadn’t known that she actually had that much anger in her body. She was rather unsure as to where she had kept it all as she was rushed to the hospital.

Laura hadn’t heard from Carmilla in a very unusually long amount of time and she was beginning to get very worried. Plus, Carmilla was supposed to pick her up from work. Not that that was a big deal when she had just accidentally wandered into the territory of thinking up any and every worst case scenario that she possibly could. Laura had a very and extremely overactive imagination and she was quite capable of driving herself legitimately insane. If Carmilla were to die trying to protect her, Laura wasn’t sure that she could ever come back from that. Laura wasn’t even sure that she would totally want to come back from something like that.

“Laura?! What are you doing here? I thought for sure that I would be seeing you at the hospital with Detective Karnstein.” a plainclothesman said confusedly upon seeing Laura sitting behind her desk.

“What do you mean at the hospital?!” Laura asks, her heart going still, paralyzed with shock.

“I am so sorry. Has no one told you that Carmilla is in the hospital?” he asks.

“Tell me what happened...now.” Laura orders as she stands up wanting nothing more than to break some heads.

“Uhm, something happened and Detective Carmilla was shot. I don’t know much about anything at all.” he backpedaled.

“Everything that you know... now, I said.” Laura grabbed the boy by the front of his polo shirt and yanked him up and into the air. It would have made a funny image, her being literally half of the plain-clothes men's size.

“She was shot chasing down a lead that I heard was for a top secret assignment that no one, and I mean no one actually knows about.”

“Bloody hell.” Laura drops him like a lead balloon and ran around the corner and out of the door, running like a bat out of hell towards the hospital, her flip flops that she had worn to work in her hands.

\------/////-----  
“Where is she?” Laura asks, upon her arrival, not realizing that blood was tracked across the hospital tiles and nurses were rushing to her to help her instead of to tell her where Carmilla was.

“What happened? Are you okay? Can you tell me your name?” they ask, leaving Laura unsure as to why they are interrogating her. 

“What? Yeah, I’m perfectly fine. I just want to know where my girlfriend is.” Laura demands.

“You don’t appear to realize that you’re bleeding all over our floor, honey.” a nurse informs her kindly.

“Can you find out where my girlfriend is?” Laura asks, not caring about her feet as she accidentally drops her flip flops, her hands no longer strong enough to hold onto them.

“Did you...run here?” the nurse asks lunging forward as Laura collapses to the floor, the strain that she had just put her body under just then catching up with her.  
\------//////------

Laura wakes up later in a hospital bed, feeling like she really needed to go back to sleep until she remembered where she was and why she was there. That, and once she realized that she wasn’t alone in the room, there was no hope for any more rest. The voices were talking about her as well.

“You’re a very lucky woman, Detective Karnstein.” the nurse was saying.

“It’s Carmilla, and yes I am. Which thing am I lucky about?” she says with laughter in her voice.

“Both, I guess. You really should have thought to tell one of us to call her. You could have died, and she wouldn’t have known.”

“I’m sorry, I’ll do better the next time I’m bleeding all over your E.R.” Carmilla says snarkily, in a way that made Laura want to smack her for her sass.

“She cares about you a lot.” the nurse points out, making Laura blush because she really was that obvious. Not that her stinging feet didn’t already make it plain as well. She had really gone kind of overboard, calling would probably have eased a lot of her worries...that or shoes. Shoes would probably have been very good for her state of well-being.

“I care about her a lot too. Enough to know when she’s faking sleep. Good morning, Cutie.” Carmilla teases.

“Morning, woman who doesn’t call when she gets shot. I had to find out from a plainclothesman who clearly thought that I was a heartless bitch.” Laura growls.

“At least I didn’t run barefoot to a hospital and get every imaginable infection. Known to man and unknown.”

“I didn’t go out and get my sorry ass shot. How’s the other guy look?”

“I don’t know. I never got the chance to check the inside of the body bag that he ended up getting carried away in.” Carmilla smirks and Laura’s jaw drops.

“You got him?” Laura asks incredulously.

“I got him.” Carmilla nods, looking quite pleased with herself.

“You’re my girlfriend for reals now.” Laura smiles and it seems as though the merest shift in facial expression made the room light up a bit more to Carmilla.

“Are you hurt badly?” Laura asks, looking at her carefully, consideration in her eyes.

“Not at all, the bullet barely grazed my side. It just bled a lot. Why do you ask?”

“I want ya to come over here so I can kiss you really well to make it all better.” Laura requests with what Carmilla comes to describe as her ‘saucy lady’ voice. The only sense that that made to Laura related to pizza or spaghetti and usually made her a little bit hungry.

Carmilla pulls her I.V. out with a grunt and swings her legs over the side of the bed, and crosses the room with a hand on her side to meet Laura.

“I’d better get used to this. You aren’t going to be able to walk and/or leave my sight for a while.” Carmilla groans, kissing Laura hard, and climbing into the tiny bed with her.

“This isn’t at all practical. There’s literally no room in here with all of these wires and the bandages all over my feet.” Laura complains, ignoring the pain in her feet since she knew that was all her own doing to herself.

“What possessed you to do that anyway?” Carmilla asks, thinking back to when she had learned that Laura had waddled into the ER gross and bleeding all over the place looking for her. The guilt had destroyed her until she heard that she was pretty much okay, she had just over exerted herself by running a good 35 miles barefoot, from the police station to the hospital. It had been one of the scariest moments of her life. She could barely imagine what had been going through Laura’s mind with only the knowledge that she had been shot and nothing else to go on. Upon second thought, she could totally understand Laura’s head-space.

“I was barely there while I was running. I’m not the world’s most athletic person so I have absolutely no idea of how I even managed to get here in one piece.” Laura shakes her head.

“You didn’t get here in one piece, Poptart. A couple of your pieces are probably scraped off onto the sidewalks of the city for some poor pedestrian to come across.” Carmilla nestles into the bed and allows Laura to lay her head on Carmilla’s shoulder as the older woman flips onto the news as was their practice. The first thing they saw was the outside of the hospital that they were in.

“Isn’t that?” Laura asks.

“Uh huh.” Carmilla affirms, about to start shaking in fear.

“We are in so much trouble.” Laura groans.

“Trouble, danger, screwed completely. Those are all shoes that currently fit our current situation.” Carmilla gulps, reaching across to the other bed where her Glock had been hidden underneath her pillow.

“Across the city, people have been claiming to have seen the girl who reportedly ran almost 40 miles barefoot to find out what happened to her significant other, a police officer injured in a firefight with a local gang.” the journalist reports from a sidewalk outside of the hospital. “People who have provided us with unclear photos like these would just like to say that they would have offered you a ride.” she relays their message with an apparently amused grin.

“Screwed is right. My face is on the television, also known as the exact opposite of what we would want. Do you really think that they would try something inside of a city hospital. This place is crawling with policemen to protect the both of us.” Laura says with panicked eyes, but completely trusting in Carmilla and her coworkers to take care of her for as long as she would need it. “At least they didn’t mention my name.”

“You’ll be just fine, Cupcake.” Carmilla promises, trying her best to not panic either. She wasn’t completely confident but she wanted to do her best to appear that way for Laura. However, she did her best to work with the grim determination that ended up being all she could muster. Laura could see through it all, Carmilla’s jaw muscle was working over time and she could feel the pounding of her heart through her chest where Laura’s head was laying.

“I know that when you’re here. I don’t think that we can maintain being conjoined at the hip forever though. No matter how enjoyable one or both of us might find it.”

“We are being hunted as we speak and your mind is still in the gutter. How do you pull that off?” Carmilla asks. 

“It’s a talent that I have kept up with since my teenage years. It at some point also became a stress response on top of that on thing being really all I have been thinking about around you and not around you for the past week and a half. It really shouldn’t be unexpected with your habits of you know, just walking around half naked in the apartment after telling me that I was going to wait after one of the single hottest smooches that I had ever experienced, and that was just you faking it. Anyway, I’m going to take a nap now, so wake me up if we are being shot at. I don’t want to miss you blowing the smirk off of one of those bastard’s faces.” Laura closes her half open eyes and lays her head on Carmilla in a spot where the older girl’s heartbeat will comfort her. Carmilla strokes Laura’s hair in that way that she knew Laura liked to go to sleep to, every now and then kissing the top of her head, just to remind herself that they were together and okay for the time being. Carmilla knew that there was a one in ten chance of someone that they didn’t want to had seen that report that they didn’t want to, but it made the detective anxious anyways, so she settled in for yet another sleepless night. This time it was much improved by having Laura there with her. 

Everything was better when it had Laura in it, Carmilla had decided. She was a little scared of how short of a span it had taken for her to fall for the tiny journalist. It seemed unfair that she would have to subject herself to being in love that way, but she knew that they had had no choice in the matter, she knew completely that they would have found one another eventually and have fallen in love despite the way that they had eventually met. However, as Laura had said repeatedly and often since they moved in together, it made a great and romantic story. Carmilla couldn’t help but think that one day, it might be a really great story to tell their children. It had gotten so bad that Laura had begun to make Carmilla begin to think about children. Carmilla was quite sure that she had always hated children, but now she was thinking that raising a few of them themselves, might not be quite so bad, just so long as they were together. She could barely wait to see Laura with a miniature version of herself or with a smaller version of Carmilla. She couldn’t really picture herself pregnant but she imagined that Laura would be absolutely radiant. She thought that it could really be quite fun.

She kept thinking about talking to Laura about it but found herself much too embarassed to. She was pretty sure that it was much too early into their relationship to be using that four lettered ‘L’ word, but she still caught herself doing that a lot too, in her mind. There was no way that she was going to start bringing marriage into the discussion yet, and there was no way in hell that she was going to bring up little tiny itty bitty ones into it. She knew that Laura would be receptive to the conversation, but Laura was the one who was supposed to bring it up. Carmilla was supposed to be the one wearing the red outfit and Laura was supposed to be the one wearing the blue. the red one was supposed to be the tough one who was secretly a mush ball on the inside. Carmilla couldn’t help but to find herself melting a little on the inside from the cuteness every time that Laura moved or made a sound. She was a little bit disgusted. Mostly with herself and a little bit with Laura for her ability to be adorable.

“Carmilla, what are you still doing awake? There’s no need for you to worry. We’ve told off the reporters involved and half of your police force and a couple of Federal Bureau agents are still downstairs, just in case anything were to happen. They have come because they respect you and you are a symbol to them. They are all here to protect you and your little girlfriend.” a nurse said, looking at Carmilla and knowing that she was up with worry and awake with the intense need she felt to defend Laura Hollis at any and all cost.  
“Is it okay for me to stay up anyway? Could it possibly hurt me? Or even maybe her?” Carmilla asks, pretty sure that she was going to stay awake anyway. 

“Nope. It’s all quite super good. You can go on ahead and force yourself to stay awake. You are just going to get absolutely, totally and completely exhausted from your gunshot wound healing and from forcing yourself to stay awake. That’s not any good for you or your healing. I don’t see how that will benefit anyone. It most certainly won’t help you to take care of Laura there.” the nurse tells her with a knowing smile, she was completely aware of the way Carmilla’s mind worked. 

She had dealt with stubborn family members and significant others before and knew how the system worked. She knew that it had to be Carmilla’s choice to get some rest or Laura trying to get her to. The significant other almost always could convince the protector to do something or really anything. She wasn’t at all worried about the great detective Carmilla Karnstein. Laura, on the other hand, seemed much too serenely peaceful when it came to the whole grisly situation. Maybe it was because she was confident in Carmilla, and maybe it was because she could sense herself being protected by a lot of over protective cops who were quite pissed about one of their own having been injured.

“I’ll...consider it.” Carmilla replies. “I’m doing my best here. I’m not used to being the one who needs protecting at all. I’m used to being the one doing the taking care, not being taken care of.”

“I need cuddles. You need to be cuddling me instead of worrying yourself sick. Now, I don’t feel like I’m being cuddled. Fix that.” Laura orders nearly ten minutes later.

“You are so demanding.” Carmilla groans as though she hadn’t been about to ease herself down farther into the bed as opposed to standing guard the rest of the night.

“You love it.” Laura teases.

“No, I love you.” Carmilla corrects her, a loving look in her eyes. Laura knew that look and corrected her memories to show Carmilla having been sitting up looking at her and thinking about her as opposed to her having been worrying.

“You so cheesy. Why does no one ever realize this about you? They all think that you are so tough and hardcore, but you are soooo lovey dovey and gooey on your insides.” Laura says, her eyes gazing up at her like she was the sun, the stars, and the moon making something like she wanted nothing more than she was in possession of at that exact moment.

“I’ve decided that I am most likely in love with you. It is the only thing that would explain my intense icky-ness at the moment. I am not normally like this.” Carmilla growls.

“Oh, I am so sure.” Laura laughs into Carmilla’s shirt.

“Bite me, beautiful.” Carmilla says with her classic smirk and roll of the eyes.

“What if I did?” Laura asks, her eyes going from dorky to seduction eyes in point two seconds flat.

“Then you would definitely find out very quickly that I-always-bite-back.” Carmilla whispers into her girlfriend’s ear. They were pressed so tightly together in the bed that Laura’s shiver resonated all of the way into Carmilla. Gently, ever so gently, Carmilla pressed her top row of teeth into the raised edge of the younger woman’s collarbone that shiver was plain to anyone and everyone who could have possibly seen what had happened. Laura rolled over into Carmilla’s arms, being careful to keep her weight off of the wound that she had won saving Laura’s life, and her own weight off of her feet. She had won those as proof of how much she cared about Carmilla and how much that she always and forever would care. She had decided that she would bear those scars for the rest of her life as a reminder of who she should run to. Who she should always remember to run to under every circumstance, no matter what it was that was going down.

Laura pressed her lips to Carmilla’s slowly, enjoying the feeling of them being pressed together, unsure of how long it would or could last. She loved having Carmilla close, no matter the circumstance. She loved knowing that she was with someone who loved her and whom she loved. She loved the knowledge that Carmilla was willing to do anything for her and that she was willing to do the same. She considered them to be a very good match and she was very excited about the future that they might and that they could have together. 

She knew that Carmilla was thinking about the future and was of course much too scared to ask to talk about it, but she wanted to know how long it would take. An admission of love was a brilliant first step and Laura was definitely willing to take it. Laura would take it every single day for the rest of her life. Carmilla’s hands found themselves winding into Laura’s golden brown locks as had become her habit, automatically. The regular tug and pull and stroking of Carmilla’s fingers against her head were quite the comfort to Laura, and she loved it. She also loved that Carmilla was completely willing to allow her to take the lead in situations like this, considering that she was the one who made the first move on their first kiss. Though, it depended on whether it really counted as their first kiss or not. Was a cover kiss a real kiss?

Carmilla finally pressed back while Laura’s thoughts had been distracting her. Her tongue made Laura’s inside melt into putty and her mind completely bottomed out. She couldn’t think a damn thought as hands ran up and down her sides, over the top of her rib cage, and across the sides of her breasts.

“This was decidedly not what I meant when I suggested that you relax and/or went to sleep.” the nurse said with a light yelp, upon checking up on them. “Don’t make me separate the two of you. There is a time and a place for such things. This is not it.”

“There has yet to be a time and a place. I’m kind of getting tired of waiting for one.” Laura growls at her.

“We can wait my love, and we really should get some rest. Do your best to settle in.” Carmilla encourages her.

The next morning Carmilla kind of forced the hospital to allow both her and Laura and to check themselves out AMA. As a detective, Carmilla was allowed out early. As a detective’s girlfriend Laura was allowed out just so long as Carmilla was there to take care of her. Laura didn’t care about much of anything just so long as Carmilla was there to take care of her. Her feet were still sore, but not the kind that they gave out heavy duty painkillers for. Carmilla got the lion’s share of those, and they were all that was keeping her on her feet from what Laura was able to tell. Carmilla had apparently made it her duty to tend to Laura’s every need and whim, it got on her nerves a little bit more every day.  
She felt nearly as though Carmilla had a little bit of guilt about her feet.

“You know that I’m good to limp around a little bit now, right?” Laura asks.

“Yeah, but you came because I was too thoughtless to call. This is no big at all.” Carmilla attempts to reassure her.

“I should have been smart enough to get a car.” Laura laughs, standing to make her own cocoa.

“Sit. It’s no big, I said.” Carmilla says with a smile as though she knows something that nobody else did. It was at that moment that Laura’s father, and her friends all poured into Carmilla’s tiny apartment that they had been sharing since Carmilla had taken Laura in. Carmilla had had the event planned for the past month since she had brought Laura home. LaFontaine immediately blasted their way into the room, picking Laura up and off of her feet and swinging her around the room, almost breaking several different objects and narrowly missing Carmilla’s eye with the tiny woman’s foot.

“I’m going to take it that you’ve missed me.” Laura laughs happily, hugging her friend back.

“I’ve missed you loads.” they reply. “I was so scared for you.”

“You didn’t need to be. I have my own personal bodyguard. Rumor has it that she would take a bullet for me.” Laura says with a nod in Carmilla’s direction.

“How’s my baby girl doing?” Papa Hollis asks, looking at his daughter as though she were a Ming dynasty porcelain vase that might crack if he stared too hard.

“I’m fantastic. How are you, Daddy?” she asks.

“Better now that I can see you for myself.” he answers, his hard face cracking into a smile when he sees that his only child seems to be doing okay. He ruffles her hair and Carmilla finds herself seriously loving that she gets to observe the interaction. She can tell that Laura gets a significant portion of her adorableness from her father, whom she has heard is crazily overprotective. “That was a very silly thing that you did.” he says.

“Yeah, I’m figuring that one out for myself, but Dad I swear that I was so scared right then that I couldn’t tell you what my name was if you had asked. Think about what you would have done if you had been me and I had been Carmilla. That’s the place that I was in.” she explains.

“I guess that I can’t protect you from everything, can I?” he asks.

“No, but between the two of you, you know, you and Carmilla, I take it that things are going to get a little bit stuffier for me again.” Laura groans. “I’m not even allowed to stand up to get my own hot chocolate.”

“Yeah, I’m going to want to introduce myself to this Detective Karnstein. I’ll be back, baby girl.”

“I know that you will.” Laura says with a soft smile, the one that says that she really really loves her father.

“Here, honey. Your Carmilla keeps getting stopped on her way over here. I thought that I should bring this on over or you would never have gotten it.” Perry says as she takes a seat beside of Laura.

“She’s hot.” says Danny as she sits down on Laura’s other side, a box of cookies in hand.

“I know, right?” Laura agrees, “How was I ever supposed to resist when I had to live with her and her intense aversion to wearing clothes around the house? Could anyone really expect me to do anything less than fall in love with her? Sometimes I just look at her and think please let me have your babies and then I remember that we are a lesbian couple and that it is physically impossible for her to knock me up and I get mildly disappointed, disappointed. That really isn’t something that I should be getting disappointed about is it? Is this really normal behaviour or is it some hing that has resulted from too many terrifying experiences in a very short amount of time? Because I am starting to worry about myself over here.” Laura rambles in her very Laura manner.

“Honey, I’m pretty sure that you are just fine. If you ask me it’s because you and the detective had no other option but to get to know one another very well in a very short amount of time. Then, you were living together and seeing one another every day and a sort of unbreakable bond formed between the two of you that literally anyone and everyone can see.” Perry says as Danny nods along in agreement.

“You seem absolutely perfect together, if you ask me. And that is coming from me, you know how I feel about you dating people who aren’t me.” Danny says. “She’s good for you and she makes you happy. She nearly died for you. You both and your relationship have my full approval. That’s truly impressive, considering who I am. In fact I’m going to go talk to her for a minute.” Danny excuses herself pleasantly, completely open about her previous crush on Laura that had take a whole lot of work to get over. And she really really meant a whole lot of work to get over.

“Hey, Laura. I’m going to get going now. I’m looking forward to seeing you a lot more often now, little sweetheart.” Laura’s father says as he ruffles her hair again, and kisses her forehead while one arm hugs Carmilla. “And another thank you to you for taking care of my baby while I couldn’t.” he says, the emotion in his voice proving that he really meant it as well.

“I’m sure that it was all my pleasure.” Carmilla confessed, kissing Laura’s forehead.

“Yes, so I see.” he growled. “We can discuss that at a later date. I’m pretty sure that you broke a thousand protocols during your time in a relationship with my daughter and as a fellow officer of the law I am not quite sure of how I feel about that.”

Carmilla seems visibly shaken and Danny snorts in response. “Welcome to the world of Laura’s family. Just know that if you hurt her...Papa Hollis is going to have to wait in line to get at you.” she adds as she stands and pulls Perry to her feet as well.

“Papa Hollis will be at the end of that line.” Perry says with a single raised eyebrow. 

“Count on it.” LaFontaine adds. “We love her more than just about anyone in our lives.” it was the look on their face that sealed Carmilla’s thought process on the group. They were all totally and completely bonkers, only in the best way. In that Laura Hollis kind of bonkers way. Carmilla Karnstein was a definite complete supporter of the Laura Hollis kind of crazy. She loved the Laura Hollis kind of crazy.

“I can sympathize with those lines of thinking, yes. She IS my favorite person in my life. I have no family and no friends, so she’s all that I have got.” Carmilla explains, not caring that she was making a big deal out of how much she cared about Laura in front of a large group of people. 

She had quickly gotten to the point that she has come to terms with the fact that she was in reality very much a sap. Carmilla was also discovering that while she was very much becoming an incredibly sappy human being, she didn’t really mind so much when it was Laura Hollis that she was becoming a major cuddle bunny over. She didn’t mind much of anything when it came down to having Laura around. Laura made everything better. Laura soothed those voices in Carmilla’s mind reminding her of every possible negative outcome. With Laura around the world got just a little bit brighter and her mind felt just a little bit lighter. She rolled her eyes at herself, she was beginning to sound like a really fantastic Ed Sheeran song, the kind that would make Laura’s eyes get really big and make her stare at her with a subtle pout. These incidents were actually quite common around the apartment.

“You know, I wish that I had friends like you guys. I have the boys down at the station, but that is nowhere near the same thing.” Carmilla says with a wistful smile.

“Now you do, just so long as you don’t hurt our girl, you’re a part of the group and we would kill for you. Embrace the weird, Carmy.” LaFontaine says with a grin that lit up the entire room. Maybe that brilliant smile wasn’t just a Laura thing, maybe these guys had something that Carmilla was missing. She could feel that piece of herself coming back the more time that she spent with her girlfriend.

“You were willing to die for our girl. That was enough to make you ‘in’.” Danny affirms.

“Welcome to the club. Once you are in, you are totally stuck in, trust me. I have been here since I was five and I have yet to find the exit.” Perry groans in a fake exhausted and totally done voice.

“Don’t...don’t call me Carmy. Just don’t. Ew, gross. That’s not cool. And thank you, I very much appreciate that. I have never really been good at the whole friends thing, no matter how hard I have tried in the past.” Carmilla says, looking sheepish and totally adorable as Laura grabs her arm and pulls her down onto the couch beside of her between herself and Perry.

“That’s depressing, Carmy.” LaF says, flopping onto the couch as well, turning sideways and putting their head in Danny’s lap. Carmilla’s jaw works as she realizes that LaFontaine has latched themselves onto the nickname and doesn’t plan on giving it up any time soon. “We can help you to find some new friends as well. Do none of the guys from the station seem like good candidates? We saw what they did at the hospital for you and the little teeny tiny one.”

“Why does everyone insist upon treating me as though I were five freaking years old?” Laura asks. “I am a grown ass woman.” she insists.

“We know that, but you are very short and appear to be twelve years old from behind.” Perry explains, the last person that Laura, Carmilla or anyone had expected to be the one to defend the tradition. 

“I think that it’s cute.” Carmilla says with a shrug. “The pouty face that you are pulling right now does nothing to back up your argument either, Honey Bunches.”

“Like your nicknames for her are any better. You refer to her as though she were a baked good.” Danny snorts snarkily. “Like Cupcake. You usually use Cupcake the most, or Creampuff. What is that even supposed to mean?”

“Short and sweet and good to eat.” Carmilla rhymes with a grin and a laughs, making everyone else laugh from the pit of their stomach as Laura smacks Carmilla in her shoulder.

“That’s awful.” she protests.

“You win on that one, Detective Karnstein.”

“I usually do.” she crows.

“Cocky, much?” Laura asks. 

“You already knew that about me.” Carmilla scolds.

“You literally just taught me canasta two and a half weeks ago, that is nothing to brag about, babe.” Laura rolls her eyes, immediately catching onto what her girlfriend was referring to.

“You should be able to at least win a hand or two though.”

“You have an unfair advantage.” Laura growls.

“Sure, whatever floats your boat.”

“Do we need to go, and like, let you ‘work this out’ on your own?” Danny asks, obviously making an innuendo, complete with quotation marks in the air.

“Don’t be crass, Lawrence. Obviously, as soon as we go, they are going to do the horizontal tango on every flat surface in the house.” LaF continues the banter.

“Right. And I’m the crass one. See you later, Wednesday. Bye, Hollis.” Danny hugs her much shorter friend and Laura in turn. She then drags away LaFontaine before they can something even more inflammatory and make Carmilla’s head explode.

“I like your friends.” Carmilla says, leaning over to hide her face inside of the place where Laura’s golden brown hair covered her shoulder and she could just nestle into the crook of Laura’s neck.

“You mean that you like our friends.” Laura corrects, turning just a little bit to kiss the top of Carmilla’s head.

“Yeah, our friends, they have a fondness almost as strong as mine for the art of the nicknames, don’t they?” Carmilla asks.

“Yeah, they do. How’d you like my dad’s less than subtle manner of laying claim to me in front of you?” Laura replies.

“I noticed that. He’s a bit overly protective when it comes to you, is he not?” Carmilla asks, enjoying the peace of being alone with Laura again.

“You could say that, I guess. He worries about me a lot. I’m not sure, or at least I don’t think that it has caught up to him yet that I’m not a little girl who needs his protection anymore and the near rape slash murder thing has kind of pulled a lot of that up and out of him lately. I hate it.” Laura groans, needing to recharge after all of that social interaction again.

“Yeah, I’ve noticed that you’re kind of not a big fan of the whole Defender of the Laura thing.” Carmilla laughs as well. “It’s kind of cute and nice. I like that you’re strong and independent enough to take care of yourself.”

“Yes, the term ‘cute’ really does makes me feel very strong and independent, thank you. That is so fantastic.” Laura laughs.

“Oh, yeah, that’s the best term to describe you though, if you ask me.” Carmilla says snarkily.

“That is exactly what I have been hearing for the entirety of my life. My cheeks have been pinched so often that they should have been turned permanently pink.” Laura chuckles, a little bit. 

“You say that as though you don’t like it, babe.” Carmilla sneaks a hand over and does the same thing that Laura had been complaining about. 

“Do that again and I will cut off that wonderful and beautiful hand off of you.” Laura advises, peeling Carmilla’s pale hand off of her face and sticking it behind her head to lean on.

“We need to go on a real date, soon. One that doesn’t help us to establish the cover story that had just been scraped together. One where I get to take you out on a Carmilla Karnstein-style date instead. One where I take you out instead of the other way around. I am famous for being able to plan some mean dates.” Carmilla says, a sparkle in her dark eyes that held a hit of fun in them.

“I thought that you had told me that you didn’t go out.” Laura asks, smirking at her, enjoying that glimmer that was in the eyes that she loved so much.

“That does not mean that I have never gone out, darling.” Carmilla says with one of her most mysterious of grins.

\------//////-----  
Carmilla spent an hour or so prepping for her date, before she went to gather up her date herself. She checked herself out in the mirror before going on in to get Laura where she was making last minute preps. Carmilla herself was wearing her classical black leather pants, a purple fitted satin-ish button down, and black matching vest. She couldn’t help but to think that maybe she was looking good enough to fit with or next to Laura. She needed herself to look good enough to be asking the question that she was going to be asking.  
Laura couldn’t help but to freak out about why Carmilla had felt the need to take her out again, especially considering that she was going to be stuck in a wheelchair for the entirety of the trip. Carmilla still wasn’t really allowing Laura to stand on her own, literally. Carmilla wasn’t planning on letting her out of the chair. It made her outfit all wrinkly and she hated it. Laura couldn’t help but really really want to just walk alongside of her super hot detective girlfriend as though they were equals. Laura couldn’t help but never feel as though they were on totally equal ground the way things currently were between them.

“You ready to go, my love?” Carmilla asks, standing in the doorway with wide eyes.

She couldn’t help but to look over Laura as though she were about to go after her right then and there. Laura suddenly felt as though they were on equal ground, despite the blasted wheel-chair. In fact, she felt as though they might have been on slightly elevated ground, with Laura up higher, At least that was how she felt as though Carmilla’s eyes were looking at her.

“With you, anywhere.” Laura agrees, picking up her bag and stepping forward to join her.

“Chair, my darling.” Carmilla reminds her.

“I don’t want to.” Laura says with a pout.

“If you don’t use your chair, you are sooo going to regret it afterwards.” Carmilla says skeptically, one eyebrow quirking up in that particular way that she has.

“Maybe I don’t want you to have to push me everywhere, and maybe I want to be able to walk beside of you and hold your hand when we go places.” Laura insists.

“Okay, Cupcake. But don’t tell me that I didn’t warn you, because I did.” Carmilla says with quite a heavy sigh, she says as she escorts Laura away.

“Hey, can you look at this for a moment?” Carmilla asks, showing Laura a chart over dinner at one of her favorite restaurants downtown.

“A ring chart? Way to ruin the surprise.” Laura scolds her, actually looking rather pissed at her girlfriend. “Why would you do that? Couldn’t you just ask my dad or somebody instead of ruining the surprise for me? Geez, Carm.”

“You want to be surprised, do ya?” Carmilla asks, gesturing to the waiter, for what Laura assumes to be the check. He comes over instead with a plate of something else.

“You’ve got a smart one.” He says with a wink, setting down whatever he has directly in front of Laura.

“I can’t believe that you...ooohh.” Laura sighs with what is distinctly and obviously pleasure, whether at the sight of the absolutely delicious looking molten chocolate moist cake and freezing cold vanilla bean white ice cream or at the sight of the absolutely gorgeous engagement white gold ring perched atop it, the detective Carmilla wasn’t quite sure as to which. When it came to the little golden Laura the only thing that she was ever completely sure of was that she was totally and completely head falling over heels in the puppy dog kind of love. Raven haired Carmilla Karnstein reaches over and plucks the silvery golden ring up and circles it up and around her pinky finger much too small to even think of any of the other fingers on Carmilla’s hands. The pure and bright blue stone shines brightly in the lamplight of the cozy place where they sat pressed up and next to one another. She slides from her seat and to the ground, down and onto one knee, her leather pants creaking as she did.

“Laura Hollis, will you please marry me?” she asks, her voice loud and clear.

At that exact moment, a group of two or three other people entered the reserved restaurant, looking mightily suspicious to Laura, who was getting used to identifying the suspicious. That is until they both turned to look and the two ganged up brothers turned to stick their heads outside of the door to yell for some others. As they await their backup Carmilla jumps up and tackles Laura over the edge of the booths, knocking her backwards. The pair are hidden and taking cover behind the back of the seats.

“Stay down, Laura. You know that it’s you they want.” Carmilla orders.

“Babe, be careful.” Laura advises from where she is ducked down and hidden.

A bullet barely misses Laura so Carmilla, already in defensive detective girlfriend mode, grabs the top of her head and shoves her down a bit farther. 

“Ouch!” Laura shouts.

“Sorry.” Carmilla grumbles as she returns fire, making contact with each shot.

Laura calls the police and asks for backup as she squeals with each bullet that passes above her or from beside of her. She is so shocked by the fact that the people who answer her already know her by name that she laughs, scaring the crap out of Carmilla who turns to check on her and almost starts to stop returning fire.

“I’m fine. Kill the sons of bitches.” Laura gives her the best advice that she knows how to.

A half of an hour after all of it had begun Carmilla relaxes at the sound of sirens, though no gunfire had been heard for the past ten minutes. The detective, and Laura’s hero, had long ago run out of bullets. and was covering Laura’s body with her own, arms covering her head, Laura’s trembling form curled into Carmilla’s. Her body rushing with fearful air after and during each breath. The next thing they knew and they were being ‘rescued’ by a couple of EMT’s wanting to check them over and telling the couple that they were alright.

“Hey, babe. You can let go of me now, you know?” Laura says, peeling Carmilla from around her and sliding herself out from inside of her strong and resilient arms. Carmilla couldn’t believe it was over, and struggled not to allow Laura to leave her.

“Honey, let go of me.” Laura orders, her voice solid, forcefully ripping her off. “We are safe now.” she grabs Carmilla’s face and says directly into her face.

Carmilla’s grip loosens as she is reassured by the oceans of raging emotions that currently occupy Laura’s eyes. Laura kisses her cheek gratefully and follows one of the medics, limping on her feet from where her scabs have broken open throughout the day. After a quick scan registers with Carmilla herself unharmed, an officer takes her away to take her statement, as the only law enforcement to have been present to protect Laura. That, and the fact that she had shot and killed four people before help had arrived meant that she was in need of definitely explaining herself. Laura’s heart still raced and her feet bled as she was loaded onto a stretcher, despite her complaints that she was okay.   
She blushed every time that someone asked her to explain what happened to her feet, and she blushed harder when she was asked what it was that she was holding so tightly that her nails had dug into the palms of her hands and left three half moon cuts. She had probably had the world’s most dramatic proposal and she had never been given the opportunity to answer her girlfriend of what was really only a few months. That ring belonged on her finger and she deserved the right to call Carmilla her fiance but she had yet to be given the opportunity or the privacy to answer that very important question.

Carmilla was thinking along the same lines as she handed over her weapon and she answered question after question.

“What did you say that you were doing before the men entered the restaurant?” the young officer asked. 

“Attempting to ask my girlfriend to marry me.” she groans, burying her face in her hands and trying not to scream out of frustration.

“For real?” he asks, unsure of whether the superior ranking officer was yanking on his chain.

“She has the ring. I still don’t know what her answer is either. She never got the chance to say yes or no because she was being shot at.” Carmilla growls. “Can I take her home now and find out?”

“I’m so sorry. I thought that you were messing with me or something because I’m new.” he apologizes quickly, his face going all of the way to scarlet red in under a second.

“It’s not your fault. I’m just trying to get over the fact that my proposal just got ruined.” Carmilla confesses.

"If you were to ask for my humble opinion, ma'am, all that matters is that the both of you are here. What do the place or the madness or the words really count for anyway? It's the feelings behind it. And the love that you both have for one another." he says, and Carmilla feels like he should have been in her college philosophy classes with her.

“You know what? You’re exactly right. YO CUTIE.” she yells across the parking lot. “WAS THAT A YES OR A NO I COULDN’T TELL OVER THE SOUND OF THE GUNFIRE.”

Laura starts to laugh at the absolute hilarity of their current situation but stops, unable but to help herself from thinking that this is exactly the way the course of their relationship has gone, gunfire and smoke and always being together no matter what. At least they both knew that everything was real from now on. The situations would never be predictable, but at least they would always be exciting. There might be a little bit or a lot a bit of danger around the corners, and twists, and turns, but they would always have one another’s backs, no matter what.

“OF COURSE I’LL MARRY YOU. YOU DUMB ASS.” she answers back from where she is fighting off EMT’s, medics and police officers who are all just trying to do their jobs.

“WELL GOOD THEN.” Carmilla replies, unsure of what to say next, as everyone around them claps, and she just sits back on her heels awkwardly, unsure of why it is always her who ends up feeling uncomfortable.

“I NEVER GOT TO EAT MY PROPOSAL CAKE, CAN SOMEONE GO SEE IF IT IS EDIBLE OR IF IT HAS BEEN SHOT????” she shouts into the crowd just in case someone is just milling around with no job to do might be willing to take it easy on a girl who had literally just gotten engaged and almost murdered all within the past half of an hour. “Can you hurry this up? In the past few months that Carmilla and I have been living together, and the fewer past months that I’ve been out of the hospital, we have yet to consummate our relationship. I would very much enjoy getting to do that now that we are engaged. Please hurry this along if at all possible.” Laura growls at all of the people in her general vicinity.  
Carmilla hurries over at the sound of Laura’s ‘I’m getting pissed off, here.’ voice.

“Detective Karnstein. New York Police Department. She’s been released into my custody.” Carmilla flashes her badge, grabs a wheelchair from the ambulance and sticks her fiance into it. “You can take it up with my superiors if you need to, but frankly at this point, I don’t give a damn.”

Carmilla, very much illegally, flees the crime scene. She runs, luckily she had worn a pair of Converse high tops instead of heels, and doesn’t stop until she reaches Central Park, a couple of blocks away from her apartment building as it starts to rain. She stops and breathes heavily, gasping for each breath. “Laura, marry me?” she asks again, on her knees in the rain.

“I already said yeah.” Laura laughs, kissing her, water pouring down their faces.


End file.
